The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Tenth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in João Pessoa, Brazil, from 10 to 13 November 2015. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> MERYEM MARZOUKI: We have shown that IU's are really reinventing themselves, but internally of their own for strategic resilience or survival. We have also shown international organization have crafted their roles mainly via issue are policy entrepreneurship, mainly IGFs since 2006. This is essentially for our workshop today in connection with Civil Society and communities. I use the plural for technical communities, because ICANN and ISOC are very different. So I prefer to use the plural.
For the main finding is that international organizations are really opening up to transnational actor, technical communities and this is for the objective of mutual consideration, their roles and activities. So we have published a lot in 2014 and 2015. If anyone is interested in the details, I can give the references. Let me just give you very quickly an illustration of the different case studies here. For instance, at the UNESCO we have shown that ‑‑ this is the codes from the key leaders that we interviewed.
After the marginalization at WSIS, they wanted to get back in the global Internet Governance Game, for this objective they came up with the Internet universality concept. Through this concept they have been channeling almost all of the mandate issues in Internet Governance discussions. What is important is how they have done this in cooperation with Civil Society mainly, also technical communities, and mainly other different IGFs. If you get back to the different each year IGF proceedings, you can notice how the UNESCO has tested its concept has got back home with new ideas with the concept more solid.
They have when I mentioned in this research, when I mention international organization, I mainly was addressing which has its own life, I would say, separate from the Assembly of Member States.
In the OECD case, it was not only linked to the IGF development to the WSIS development, but the main turn, I would say, the most important turn, was at the 2008 ministerial where the OECD ‑‑ and the OECD has succeeded to have its Member State and the Civil Society on the one hand and the Internet technical communities on the other hand as institutional as official participant to its processes, and now besides the classical business advisory community and trade union community there four years, the Civil Society and technical advisory committee. At this point of 2008, also the OECD CS has established a strong link between Internet government issues and the main mandate, the core of the organization mandate, which is in this case Internet economy.
In case of the Council of Europe, as we've been told by some key leaders interviewed from the secretary, the first IGF in Athens in 2006, when they were speaking, everyone there looked at them as aliens. And this is really occurred by one of the key leader, not ‑‑ it's not Lee, who is here. It's another of the key leaders that we interviewed. So they felt the need to strategize to put human rights at the heart of Internet Governance. They did it so well that after all the year since the first IGF, the Council of Europe has become an actor of Internet Governance, institutionalizing the IGF and would like to mention the work done on the International Principle Coalition of which the Council of Europe is a member, since this is a multi‑stakeholder coalition, of course, the charter of the human right of the Internet into a guide for human rights of Internet users that has now become an adopted recommendation of the committee of ministry of the Council of Europe.
Also, the Council of Europe has fully played the multi‑stakeholder game since 2006, with many ‑‑ setting of many committees of experts, including, of course, members of this committee of experts are delegates from some Member States, but sometimes for half of the participant, it was Civil Society, academic technical community, private sector.
So committee of experts, a huge number, I would say, of adopted declaration and recommendations with WSIS since 2005. And finally, a whole Internet Governance strategy that has been developed by the secretariat adopted by the Member States and this Internet Governance strategy has articulated almost all sectors of the Council of Europe.
Sorry? I will jump to some conclusions just to kick off the discussion. What I can say as a result of this two or three years project now is that we have really been able to demonstrate that Civil Society has established itself as a kind of new blood to rejuvenate sometimes old bodies. From the international organization side, they are in collaboration with Civil Society has been a political opportunity. Civil Society organization has played the role for them of structures to help institutionalizing the visions, the way they frame their issues, and even their outcomes, as we have seen in the case of Council of Europe guide for human rights of Internet user.
So still in the Internet Governance field we can observe the same trends for international organization and technical communities. We have started working on this so I will not go into detail on this issue. From the literature in political science and international relation, we can also confirm this trend in Internet Governance sectors by Ismael during his article in 2012 and 2013, and in particular a very recent book published in 2014 has also shown this trend in the environment sector.
This situation of cooperation of supposedly weak actors, because they are not necessarily recognized at the same level as governments, of private sector, etc., I think mainly the global Internet Governance itself. There are a number of conditions that are met now. First of all, there is no global treaty, maybe not yet. I'm sure this will take time if we reach a global treaty, anyway. There is no global treaty on Internet Governance. It's a field where mainly soft, low, and nonriding senders are preferred than binding through speaking of international standards, and this applies not only at the national level, as we see, but also at the ‑‑ not only at the global level but also at the regional and national level.
Also, the situation, but it's from the fact that the IGF is a particular setting, since its inception in 2006, and it is an environment which is very much networked, very much ad hoc, and very much messy. So this innovation, I would say, including particular innovation. Also, in Internet Governance we are dealing with highly technical issues. This is not the only field where this is true, but still highly technical issues that are quickly developing, of course, and unfolding, and they require very specific expertise. So the expertise of Civil Society and the technical communities here is very much needed.
And finally, the final condition is that it is still an issue by governance in general that it is lastly ignored by the general public, speaking of the international level especially.
This is my final slide. So my conclusion and maybe to start the discussion to open up, my conclusion is that global Internet Governance perfectly fits if it doesn't call for a multi‑stakeholder regime, but, and this is a big "but," what about democratic issue, and when I speak of human rights, it's by no mean only the civil and political right. It should also include the economic, social, and cultural right, and even all the rights like the right to development, more collective rights that have been adopted afterwards.
So regarding the democratic issue, I think we all know about there is an issue with legitimacy, representativeness, or actual openness with transparency, with accountability in one word with the balance of power in this setting. And one of the advice, and I hope my co‑panelist would discuss that, one of the needs that I see so to formalize more Civil Society among other nongovernmental, nonprivate sector accuracy. To formalize their participation in international organization proceedings mainly like the OECD did in 2008, and I think we have ‑‑ we could get some interesting idea from the IGF best practice forum on developing meaningful multi‑stakeholder participation mechanisms, a process that was led regarding the human rights and the rule of law issue, it is for sure and we have shown that with colleagues and you can find also evidence of this in the human rights literature. The specifics of the online domain are negatively impacting rights and remedies. And we may well see a translation from an Internet as a privately‑ordered space, as it was from the very beginning, to a privately contracted system of rights and there we have also this question or this issue of balance of power and the respect for human rights.
So thank you. I would stop here.
>> MODERATOR: Thanks, Meryem. Hopefully you can share this later so we can load it into the workshop to check it late. I would like to use your order, so you start with OECD ‑‑ UNESCO, OECD, and the Council of Europe. That's why I want to move to just open, and you have three minutes. I know it's challenging three minutes. No, he's different. She is supposed ‑‑ that's the keynote. Please go ahead.
>> CANELA DE SOUZA GODOI GUILHERME: Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Thank you for the invitation. I'm the regional advisor for Freedom of Expression of UNESCO for Latin America, Caribbean, and the secretariat in Paris asked me to join this session. As you saw, the previous speaker did an independent evaluation and she said we are doing well. So I'm glad I don't need to see that propaganda. Intervention: I'm glad to announce this morning the Commission of Communication Information at the General Conference approved and endorsed the Internet Connecting the Dots conference that many of you joined in Paris last March. So I think this is good news as the speaker said. Part of this is joint construction with the Civil Society.
But before going into the very briefly on the current discussion on IGF and other Internet Governance issues and fora, it's important to remind that during the history, the organization always open to known Civil Society participation. From the very beginning, UNESCO had the chair program when we had hundreds of chairs all over the world with the participation of academics in Civil Society. We have and we still have the UNESCO centers that are also joined by many Civil Society participants.
We have different networks of nongovernmental players and coalitions within the UNESCO family structure, as well as different sorts of official liaison with the secretariat and the structures within UNESCO. After WSIS, the multi‑stakeholder got a different perspective. In some cases UNESCO was prepared to receive those different players because they already interact with the General Conference and with the secretariat through those different institutional channels. Of course, now they are much more intense than they were in the past forums.
So with the WSIS+10 in 2013 in Paris, they study on the Internet to foster inclusive knowledge society that was demanded by the General Conference by Member States, but included Civil Society in the world consultation that was made, the main respondents and participants of the consultation were Civil Society organizations from all over the world, and particularly from Latin America and ‑‑ I would stop here. This is a lesson learned.
When we partner with local languages and partner with Civil Society networks on online platforms, we got more participation from Civil Society. So that's why Latin America got the same amount of response from all over the world. The rest of the world combined for this study that was presented during the connecting the dots conference.
Again, we will supporting Civil Society participation for different countries in the WSIS process, and this is a priority for UNESCO in the discussions in freedom of expression and Internet development, etc.
Just to finish, a few challenges that we hear from the Civil Society groups that approach UNESCO. Of course, it's not only about giving the same amount of time to those different players and multi‑stakeholderism. Governments and private sectors that armies and lawyers. This is not a fair game. We need to acknowledge that. We need to acknowledge it as a challenge, even though Civil Society is generating a very strong impact.
As the previous speaker said, we also have a problem of representativeness. Who is actually Civil Society representing? We are representing my grandmother here in Brazil? No, they are not. She doesn't feel represented by any Civil Society organizations in this room. So we have a representative problem.
Finally, to keep in three challenges, we also need to address ‑‑ better address the advocacy strategies, not only towards the secretariat, but also towards the other players that interact with the secretariat, with the Member States, with other different interests that are in our headquarters in Paris and New York and Geneva. So I think those three challenges that are raised by the Civil Society which interact with us themselves are very important. But that said, in the UNESCO case, we have no doubt that Civil Society participation has a huge impact in our discussions on Internet Governance and other areas related to freedom of expression. Thank you very much.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. Let's move now to the OECD and with Anne Carblanc.
>> ANNE CARBLANC: Thank you very much. I would like to make three points. The first one is that the OECD in its own way escaped the stakeholder dialogue started in 1962, at least for business and trade unions. And it continued with Civil Society and technical community. As Meryem said, the big turning point was in 2008.
The second point I would like to make is that governments continue to make decisions at the OECD, an Intergovernmental organization, but the stakeholder dialogue has evolved from instrumental to normative, and I will explain why later. The third point is what does it mean, the stakeholder dialogue? We have heard questions about the representative of the groups. These are not the only points we need to highlight. Going back to history, 1962, the OECD gave an official consultive status to business and trade unions. And the representation of different groups of stakeholders, it's like how do you say that, not patchwork, nebulous, was at the sectoral level, and in the area of ICTs, Internet, Digital Economy, the importance of consulting with Civil Society and the Internet technical community appeared as something important. I would say in the 1990s, when the Internet took off.
How did this happen? First of all, there was informal presence in 1998. The first conference on eCommerce, Civil Society was here, the digital technical community was here. There was a call by ministers not only OECD ministers, but all those who signed the declaration, to continue work with all the stakeholder groups, including Civil Society and Internet technical community.
In 2009 the community on digital economy policy encouraged the creation of two advisory committees saying there are a number of principles when you come to the OECD, but you are free to decide what representativity. And the point was made clearly that there needs at the international level to have representation which is kind of harmonized. If there is no harmonized position, then it's not the Civil Society representation in fact.
They've been doing pretty well, both SSOC and ITOC. Why did I say that? The multi‑stakeholder dialogue has evolved from instrumental to normative is because we in fact don't distinguish in practice at the OECD. Every time we have a meeting, we invite all stakeholders. The only sessions which are closed, where they are not allowed, concern the accession of new member opportunities to the OECD because it's a matter for governments to decide. In all the other cases there are at the ‑‑ they are at the table and they can contribute and they can intervene.
What we see is that they've been contributing not only to research analysis, various reports, but also extremely active when we develop legal instruments at the OECD. That has been the case for the revised privacy guidelines, the security guidelines, and even the Internet policymaking principles which were eventually agreed at the Civil Society at the second stage. Not in the first stage, but at the second stage. So it's very important.
What does all this mean in reality? And we see the representative of local or national consultation, which is a question of culture. Countries have to decide for this. But they have to represent a unified voice? Why do we think it's really important? First of all, we think it's a question of inclusion and openness. Everybody needs to have a voice. Governments have to make decisions. They need to understand what other positions of the different factors. It's common sense, I would sale. The second element is it needs trust. They get ‑‑ they start to understand better their respective points of view. They create relationships. It also allows a better decision‑making, and a greater sense of ownership of all stakeholders, including Civil Society. As a counterpart to this dialogue, what is expected from Civil Society as well as the other stakeholders is commitment. It's capacity to make comments and consensus within that community and with the other communities and some kind of consciousness of how to organize and translate the dialogue into action. It doesn't just come with rights. It also comes with obligations.
Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thanks. So now we can move to the Council of Europe, Lee.
>> LEE HIBBARD: My name is Lee Hibbard. I'm from the Council of Europe, the Internet policy coordinator, dealing with Internet Governance in the organization. I have a unique role in straddling all the different sectors of the organization and looking at it from the lens of Internet Governance. That's quite a challenge. There's lots of work, lots of people who don't know about Internet Governance, lots of colleagues who have committees of Member States who don't really necessarily always engage in the way that I engage with you in different forums.
To start with, the Council of Europe is an Intergovernmental comprising 47 Member States in the European region. It's multilateral. It's a multilateral organization. Member States meet and make decisions between Member States. But what's important is that that does not stop them from being multi‑stakeholder. So whatever happens up into that point, there is dialogue with different actors, including also more with business and now I think in the future.
An example of something happening over many years for more than 40 years, the Council of Europe in the youth sector has been the only organization to operate a system of comanagement, meaning decision‑making structures where youth organizations and governments sit together and decide our proposals for policy and programs together. That's quite unique.
So my point is that what's key to this discussion is that Member States meet and discuss in committees. They meet and discuss in committees with observers. The observers come and they talk and they can interact. They don't necessarily have voting rights, but they discuss and they contribute and they feed into discussions more and more, I think, is the case, and more are coming to the table in different fields of work.
So that's quite evident from what I see in terms of what the Council of Europe does in the field of the Internet. More colleagues are coming more ‑‑ seeing more the importance of the digital, of the Internet, and its governance, and are bringing it into their own fields of work. I see colleagues doing education with regard to digital citizenship on the Internet, culture and digitalization, plenty of fields. It's really growing quite a lot. I think my point I'd like to say regarding the interface between governments and Civil Society in the Council of Europe is a question of secretariat, as you said, Meryem, an important point. I think my experience in the Internet Governance Forum is that the secretariat can be ‑‑ it be like a bridge between governments and Civil Society that can be seen to be a trust intermediary, if you like, to get the points of view across, and back from the different actors. I think it's very important. At the same time it's very important to understand that we serve the Member States. And so, therefore, we are there to ensure there is dialogue and that Member States will create things that will initiate things and agree on things as Member States. That's very clear.
We do that in all the different structures of the organization on human rights on democracy. We do that in other spaces, like you mentioned, like in ICANN. Some of you know I'm quite involved in ICANN work. I think a good example is where we did a report by a couple of experts, a couple of years ago, which triggered debate in ICANN on its human rights credentials or the issues there. And that's led to further discussion. Actually, this year, very importantly, two declarations adopted by the Member States, the 47 Member States, were adopted in June. One on the WSIS + 10, and the multi‑stakeholder dialogue, Civil Society, the importance of making sure those negotiations and discussions leading up to New York are ‑‑ involve the voice of different actors, not just Member States. The other declaration was on ICANN human rights and the rule of law. Again, helping Member States and also helping even ICANN and the community, therefore, helping Civil Society in the communities. So quite clearly it's clear that it's recognizing learning by doing that we are really engaging in Civil Society, even in text which are adopted in that implementation.
What I've learned is that to have an Internet government strategy that you referred to, Meryem, for the last four years, which includes this year, we have a new one starting next year, hopefully, from 2016 to '19. To have a strategy is important. It brings about a common point of consensus. It's important to be multi‑stakeholder. It's important to be open and transparent, many of the principles of Internet Governance, which you know very well about. So that's really key to have a document like that in different organizations. It helps to clarify a point of departure on how to be on an Internet Governance basis.
I would point out that the Internet Governance Forum and other spaces are very important at least for secretariat to be involved. It's, again, a bridge space whereby you don't always have Member States. You don't have all the Member States represented here in the IGF, for example. So it's very important that as an intermediary that we help to bring the information and expertise back to the organization to the Member States and vice versa. So it's a very important thing to realize that this really helps ‑‑ these spaces really, really help me in Civil Society you and maybe not on the agenda at the moment on the Council of Europe, which could be.
Lessons learned include there is a need to communicate more, of course. So we need to talk ‑‑ keep on talking. Dialogue is key. I know it's obvious, but to avoid misunderstandings, to avoid if we talked maybe we would have understood things better and it would be more conducive to an approach regarding a standard or benchmark. My job really is to make sure that I can mainstream the importance of this dialogue and the voice of Civil Society, amongst other things, throughout the organization with colleagues who don't necessarily engage in Internet matters.
Finally, what I need from Civil Society, what the consequence needs from Civil Society is help in building capacity, help in implementation of standards. We don't have infinite resources. We have finite resources. Going at it on the field in countries, talking to judges, policymakers, to lawyers, whichever stakeholder, the importance of human rights, there is an approach to Internet and regulation is something to seriously think about before you do it in different fields: There is a lot of work ahead with good communication. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Okay. Thanks, Lee. So I think we will try to move more to Civil Society speaking or also the academy. With Marianne?
>> MARIANNE FRANKLIN: I work for a public institution. I'm an academic, but I've been involved in the Internet Governance in what is called participant observation, but that observation part became more and more participation. So now I'm kind of talking with the other hat as someone who has been involved with the Dynamic Coalition of rights and principle and the agenda Dynamic Coalition. I feel this is very important to note that Civil Society is a much more complex category than we send to suggest by use you go it in the singular.
We have professional nongovernmental organizations who also employ people. We also have networks made up of these sorts of small groups, informal groups, grassroots groups. We have individuals. We are all in this room by definition Civil Society, because we all belong to, I hope, we have we pay taxes. Who cares if you don't, not my problem. The point being that Civil Society is used here far too bluntly. My first point is that Civil Society is both informal, professional, and formal forms of nongovernmental, noncorporate intervention in this work.
So I wanted to make that very, very clear. The difference between the professional Civil Society person is that they have an employer, they have a job to do, just as an Intergovernmental organization employee has and a corporate employee.
But I want to actually move to the point here. If you look at these three booklets, English translation and discussion booklet on the Marco da Civil, Brazilian initiative, the Charter for Human Rights coming from the Dynamic Coalitions, in my last five seconds I'll focus on that, and the Council of Europe Guide for Human Rights for Internet Users. These are concrete examples of cooperation. These are concrete outcomes of working together. Each of them reveals different points of entry, different points of affiliation, and different points of accountability and responsibility.
If you look at them together, this is what we're working towards. And this is, in fact, one of the opportunities, but also one of the difficulties. We are working in a highly competitive environment, a highly skilled environment, and working to cooperate. We have sometimes quite conflicting priorities and needs and requirements. So the fact we can look at least three outcomes of this nature is an extraordinary achievement. I just want to note that for the record. That's what it looks like.
The other thing I want to say in this short time is that if we move to how the IGF has been structured, at least on paper, its main constituency on paper is something called Dynamic Coalitions. From the professional Civil Society point of view, this is a problematic category, and for other stakeholders, because the problem there is for Dynamic Coalition as it has been understood in the IGF, as we say in IGF, it's neither fish nor fowl, fowl meaning bird.
We can't address it as a government representative, can't address it as a corporate representative, and we can't address it as a professional NGO person. So Dynamic Coalitions have been suffering from the ambiguity; however, they are also an attempt to generate a space for cooperation. That has been happening. So hopefully if you go there, which would be great if you did, the dynamic coalition main sessions on Thursday afternoon and Friday morning will actually be showcasing the kind of work that has been produced from the Dynamic Coalitions. That's very important.
Give me one second. So what happens at this level of interaction with professionals is what we're doing is we're moving around with these multiple affiliation and conflicting points. Everyone is doing a job. What we forget is the IGF actually humanizes a deeply democratic process. You get to know them in the specific role they have for governmental organizations, the things they cannot and may not say in public, which by law and by convention certain groups may not enter. Of course, there is also opening for contestation, the same thing for corporate representatives. They are bound by certain contractual obligations. The groups and networks that can arguably move around more freely is this largely constituency called Civil Society.
You have to take people at their word on one level, but you have to also understand that you are interact being in a professional and sometimes confined form of interaction. That can help when you feel that everything is impossible and is simply representing global capital, when he or she may be doing their job. It seems obvious, but you don't really know what this means in an experiential level until you get really deeply involved in this work.
One is compromised. One does have to make concessions, and one cannot take positions that are pure and unadulterated, because you have to interact with people you would not normally be interacting with. That's what the dynamic coalition structure has been trying to achieve. It's not a complete failure, I know we'll get another round, but we are talking here about consent building. I would like us to try to move our conversation to considering that what we actually begin with all of us in these settings is we begin with dissent. We begin with disagreement. We begin with difference. That's what we're working with.
And what we need to consider is that we need to find spaces to allow dissent and disagreement of a deep, deep nature, institutional, cultural, ideological, to actually exist in the space. That's the challenge, I think, for the IGF going forward. Certainly a challenge for Dynamic Coalitions is it tries to find a space and a voice amid some highly skilled organizations from the government, the corporate and the professional NGO sector. That's point is all I want to say right now. I have a lot more to say, as you can always expect, but not right now.
>> MODERATOR: Okay. Thanks, Marianne, we hope that you have more time to say things. The middle of our session, so just really want our speakers to keep brief so we can leave some time for the audience to ask questions, to have kind of interaction here.
So I want to move to Deborah here so we can talk more about other spaces, starting with ITU and Human Rights Council and we need to talk about the experience of Civil Society there. Later we can move to ICANN. Please.
>> DEBORAH BROWN: Thanks very much for inviting me. I work for the Association for Progressive Communications, which is both an international Civil Society organization and a network of members. And I'll share some experiences today working as Civil Society at the ITU International Telecommunications Union, the UN General Assembly, and the world Information Society process, the review process which is currently going on. One point that stands out to me there is no one multi‑stakeholder model. There are some key principles and practices that making Civil Society easier and more effective and influential, but there is also different points on the spectrum that Civil Society can engage in.
The first most important thing for Civil Society from my perspective is to know the process, to use it, and to push it further. For example, working at the ITU, there are some opportunities for Civil Society engage in its own right, for independently interact with different meetings, but really where the decisions are made are at the Intergovernmental level among Member States. One effective strategy we found was to join national delegations and be able to work on texts, to in some case Civil Society has been able to speak on behalf of their government for smaller delegations to get text into resolutions and into binding decisions. That's an example, a concrete one, we had at the recent meeting in Korea that the ITU held.
In other venues at the Human Rights Council, Civil Society through ECOSOC or if they can get an ECOSOC accredited organization to accredit them for different meetings. In Geneva, it's more an open process. And if we're talking about Internet Governance, there are some resolutions that deal with Internet related public policy issues. That's why we're talking about it in this context. Last year there was a resolution on the right to privacy in the digital age which created a new special rapporteur. In Geneva, for example, they were examples where Civil Society was invited in and given the floor and to weigh in on discussions and help influence the discussions and give their opinion.
In New York, I want to emphasize that it's a bit more closed. We're able to engage in the two UN Assembly resolutions in the digital age, but we weren't able to open the sessions. We were able ‑‑ we weren't able to take the floor, for example. So it's really important to know where you can fit in and where you can influence and to understand even within the same processes or same issues, Civil Society can play a different role.
I want to talk about the WSIS review process, as other speakers have mentioned, have been going on for a few years now in different phases. There was the UNESCO phase and Connecting the Dots, and Civil Society was able to attend and intervene in the organizations or the deliberations over the outcome text. There was also a year‑long process by the international telecommunications union called the multi‑stakeholder preparatory process. In that case Civil Society organizations that were not even ECOSOC could attend and participate in the negotiations, take the floor and intervene. Which I said initially we have to push the process, I think for a lot of us in the room we were sitting there expecting to be given the floor and then we learned after a few meetings we could just take the floor at the same time as others, and I think it was a bit different for us. At the end of the process, a Civil Society representative was actually asked by the chair to help come up with the draft text in one section. So I think really being part of the discussions and pushing, not being very timid based on other processes where we're asked to be only to take the floor or only to intervene at a certain level, to push them is one strategy to move things forward.
Again, highlighting the divide between New York and Geneva, the WSIS process has now moved to New York and we're really much more limited in how we can interact. There are informal consultations with nongovernmental stakeholders, and then there's governmental consultations or negotiations. And we're really at this point only four more meetings in New York. They're informal and inform meeting that Civil Society or other stakeholders aren't allowed in the room and not even allowed to observe. So I think it's important to know where you can play a role and when you're allowed to participate in your own right. There is one strategy and other times you might have to go through governments, which is not ‑‑ doesn't replace the independent Civil Society voice. It says more of a tactic in order to get your own priorities in the process.
I think another second critical issue is to have access to the documents and to be able to meaningful engage. This is something that's a real challenge when in some cases the documents are closed or not really circulated to nongovernmental stakeholders. As mentioned, Civil Society and other stakeholders can share documents. That's a real strategy that's been effective in helping provide meaningful engagement, because other if Civil Society is in the room and doesn't know what's going on, doesn't have the full understanding of the discussion, we can't rail be very effective. And since I know we're running short on time, just a third point is the link between national and back down to the national is extremely important. Engaging in national consultations and putting in national debates is one way to start influencing your government's policy. Not all regions, of course, have region, but then engaging in your own right at the global level where you can influence global debates.
Once outcomes are adopted and start to be influenced at the national level, that's another opportunity to actually influence change on the ground. Then just one final point in terms of challenges, because I'm not sure if we'll actually have another round of interventions, is, of course, the biggest challenge is funding resources to make this all happen. Even for process is fully open, remote participation is available. You don't have a diversity of voices both to attend the meeting and funding for people's time to stay engaged, to follow the debate and not to drop off between meetings or different processes. There's only going to be certain people at the table, only certain interests that are represented, and it's not really what we would hope to have in terms of meaningful inclusive multi‑stakeholder debates.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. Let's move to kind of different space, like ICANN and then to start with Bill. Bill Drake.
>> WILLIAM DRAKE: I'm Bill Drake and I teach at the University of Zurich, but I am involved in many Civil Society over the years, and in the current context and for three more weeks the chair of the Noncommercial Users Constituency in ICANN which has 454 members.
Rafik sent out some questions that we could focus on. I thought in terms of those questions, but I'll just speak more integrative and I will do so referring only to the piece that I'm involved in. Civil Society and ICANN is actually broken up into several different spaces. It's a complex architecture that would make people outside crazy. Usually you have to spend a good deal of time explaining it to people who are coming in for the first time and taking a look and trying to figure out where to get engaged. There are three ‑‑ depending how bunk it, four different spaces within which one can work. In the one that I'm involved in, I would say the following: First I wanted to say about the Intergovernmental organizations, I think that it's very interesting to hear about your efforts to accommodate the involvement of Civil Society, and I think that the extent to which you have is really a marker of how much things have changed in the past decade.
It's something that we often almost take for granted now. People who didn't have ‑‑ who don't have a historical perspective forget that back in the first phase of the WSIS, we were being thrown out of the room. We didn't know whether we had the ability to participate. I remember standing up to speak for the Internet Governance caucus, Civil Society Coalition during a WSIS meeting and as soon as I started to talk, the gentleman behind me, who is a vice minister from a country, said, "Mr. Chairman, who is this man? Why are we listening to him?" and started shouting. So those days are gone, I think. By and large, UNESCO, Council of Europe, OECD, have all done great things in accommodating greater involvement for us.
Of course, there are, obviously, very strong limits. There are some international organizations where it's very difficult. Thinks of the Trade Association is very much Intergovernmental and the ability to influence those discussions is really limited to be able to occasionally have some briefings and side chats and things like that. ITU you have to join generally historically you've had to join the national delegation to participate. It's been hard to get Civil Society recognized as an independent actor the way the ITU is set up. There is still room for growth there.
ICANN is a very different situation, because it is truly, at least in a legal terms an equal footing multi‑stakeholder process and one in which Civil Society actually gets to vote on things alongside peers from various fragments of the private sector. So the group that I'm involved in represents Civil Society in the generic name supporting organization, which form later policies pertaining to the top level domains, generic top level domains.
In that context, we have an architecture in which, basically, Civil Society gets one‑fourth of the votes. When it comes to actually working on determining what kind of policy should apply for the database or different types of gTLDs, whether they should be closed generics or whether we have a larger gTLD program in the first place, etc., freedom of expression issues, a lot of things we care about, privacy. We're able to actually cause some trouble sometimes. And at least take the sharp edges off of bad policies that in our view would have been worse.
So that's really quite something. Very often the different parts of the private sector, to be able to pass something have to have coalition with some of us. So that means that we are able to work a variable geometry. Sometimes we work with one part of the private sector whose interests we share on a particular issue; sometimes we work with a different part of the private sector in opposition to the one we worked with on the other issue. This is going on all the time.
We have this very complex interaction with these folks, but we do have the ability to engage directly. And in consequence, I think we've had a reasonably good impact on ICANN's policies pertaining to gTLDs, especially more recently. In the Dublin ICANN meeting that happened just a few weeks ago, we celebrated our 16th anniversary as coalition, having durable and effective coalitions. We have seen other coalitions come and go.
Often our influence comes in a sort of longer term rather than immediate impact way. We're able to sort of get ideas onto the table that slowly work their way into the process and eventually become hard for everybody to ignore. So, for example, we pushed for human rights as a general proposition to be brought into ICANN as a standard of evaluation of policies. We formed coalitions with friendly governments and other actors in the ICANN space. Now we're seeing real progress in getting this into the bylaws potentially and recognize more generally.
Privacy protection: We spent years railing about privacy protection in ICANN and finally what we managed to do was form coalition with registrars, we brought the data commissioners into the process and engaged them, reaching out with coalitions, maximizing the different parties, because we don't control resources. Civil Society doesn't have tanks. It doesn't issue taxes. It doesn't have the same kind of material resources that others can bring to the table, but what it does have is the ability to put normative pressure and the ability to contribute expertise, we have been able to put ideas onto the table that prove to be something that led to a possible solution. And I think Civil Society particularly can be influential in situations where you're dealing with complex issues, a lot of uncertainty among different accuracy.
Nobody's quite sure what will break a deadlock. You need to have kind of orthogonal different approach. Sometimes people don't come to it immediately. You propose something like human rights and they say oh, we don't know what that means for us. But eventually over time, as other dialogues play out, it becomes clear that this is actually a reasonable way to take something forward, to break a deadlock, to advance a process.
So I do tend to think in kind of more evolutionary rather than revolutionary terms. I don't have unrealistic expectations that Civil Society should be able to walk into a meeting and we put our thing on the table and everybody says oh, yes, of course, we put aside all of our commercial interests and we will do exactly what you say. That's not going to happen. But we can soften bad policies. We can slowly change the discourse. We can get certain ideas on the table. If we muster expertise and if we have coherent coalitions advancing those objections, we often can make a difference. I think that's important. Just to conclude, what I would say that a lesson I would draw from the ICANN experience for the Intergovernmental environment is the decision rules, the rules of participation really matter.
It's really ‑‑ you get a qualitatively different experience out of Civil Society in terms of contribution if they're really given the opportunity to be full partners in a policy process to contribute their expertise, to put ideas on the table, and work them through. If you have a process that says the governments talk for 90 minutes, and in the last five minutes three people can stand up and speak for all of Civil Society for five minutes, that, generally speaking, is better than nothing, but it is not anything like what we get in a multi‑stakeholder setting. So I would certainly encourage efforts to think about ways in which the decision‑making processes can be adapted to take full advantage, not because there's a normative obligation or we'll take to the streets and riot or something like that, but because we actually can contribute constructively to the debate and help to solve problems. And I think that that sometimes is not always fully appreciated in some Intergovernmental settings. So I'll stop there. Thanks.
>> MODERATOR: Thanks, Bill. So we'll go with Baher Esmat.
>> BAHER ESMAT: I work out of the Middle East and the North Africa region. Just in the interest of those who do not know what ICANN is, ICANN is the Internet Corporation for assigned names and numbers. It's the global body in charge of the naming system. And in relationship, Bill is one of the ‑‑ ICANN is also one of the several or many organizations in the IG space that allows for multi‑stakeholder participation. Policies are ‑‑ talking about policy participation from ICANN from sort of staff or organization point of view, we see it I would say two levels. One is the regional level. This is where regional teams particularly in regions that are not very well represented at ICANN, we develop regional strategies to involve stakeholders from our region, from business, from Civil Society, technical community and we do outreach. And when I say "we," I don't mean only staff. We do collaborate with community members and experts from our community in those activities.
So part of the regional strategies we have in regions like Africa, Latin America and the Middle East, we have particular focus on reaching out to Civil Society groups and involving them in our work. The engagement from one region to the other depends on the knowledge and the expertise and the kind of capacity that is available in the region.
But that's one source of level or angle. The other angle is to look to take more of a holistic approach and to look at the sort of global stakeholder engagement at ICANN. One of the engagements that ICANN embarked on in the past few months is to develop a strategy for Civil Society engagement in ICANN. A group of community members have been discussing this for a while now. Some ideas have been put on the table, and the idea here is to have more structured approach towards involving Civil Society by providing them with the tools to enable them to participate, but also to participate effectively. So we thought about bringing more people to ICANN or to increase the number of Civil Society groups or organizations that participate in ICANN, but also to work on making this participation more effective. So the group is talking about tools like communication tools like online tools, talking about strengthening engagement efforts on the ground through outreach activities and capacity building activities. And this work is becoming to be more material with the draft strategy document that should be available within a few days for the greater community to see and to provide comments on.
Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thanks, Baher. We have 20 minutes left. Maybe we can try to get five extra minutes if you don't mind about the lunch. Let's move to talk about the communication that's different setting and also the different topic about cybersecurity. And then we will try to go with the rest of speakers to talk about regional and international experience. And I want everyone to keep to three minutes, if possible. Yes, Matt, please go ahead.
>> MATTHEW SHEARS: I would like to acknowledge this is a wonderfully full room. Thank you all for coming. It's fantastic.
I'm going to switch around and talk about the Freedom Online Coalition second. I'd like to give you a couple of pieces of food for thought. Deborah referred to earlier on about the WSIS process and that's what we've been hearing a lot about here. And just to tell you that the WSIS document that we've been talking about has considerable input from Civil Society on key issues of interest to Civil Society. If anybody wants to understand what those are, they can come up and talk to some of us up here, particularly Deborah. The reason why we have language in that document is because over the past three years we, some of Civil Society, have been consistently engaged in the WSIS process. This leads me to the first bumper sticker, if you will, for addressing Rafik's first question, how we assess and enhance our participation is based upon three key issues, which I call the three C's. The first is coherency. The second is cultural approach, valuable partner over time. The third is consistent presence.
In many ways the third one is as important as the other two, because throughout the process of the WSIS we were there, and we are still there engaged in the WSIS. And because of that consistent presence and because a small number of Civil Society organizations were very constructive, participating in multi‑stakeholder processes dealing with the ITU in the WSIS, we were able to have the kind of impact that we've had on the language.
Now, who knows whether or not that language will survive through negotiation process, but, again, it's that coherency, and the constructive process that really helps.
Rafik asked what the lessons from the other stakeholders are. Take a look at the schedule for this meeting. What's the first thing that you come across pretty much on every day on the schedule? It's ICC meeting. That's one of the greatest lessons we can take away from other stakeholders is organization. They are consistently organized and consistently coming together to review their positions and whether they can agree and find consensus. Obviously, they're organized. Again, because in Civil Society we don't necessarily always have a consistency of views and are able to come to consensus, but something we should strive towards, organization, and consensus, if possible.
Rafik asks what do we do with regards to partnerships? Obviously, Civil Society has a voice. It's a unique voice and we should be leveraging that as much as possible. But partnerships are highly desirable. Why are partners highly desirable? Because one voice is one voice. When you add another stakeholder to that, that becomes much more than two voices. It becomes more noticeable. This is a fundamental reality that we have to deal with as a Civil Society; we have to learn and start to want to work across stakeholders, because our voice is multiplied by working with other stakeholders.
So that was just my takeaways. So on the Freedom Online Coalition, an international grouping of 28 countries that work to promote Internet freedoms online around the globe; they do it from a kind of foreign policy protecting Internet freedoms in other countries. It's Intergovernmental. One doesn't have the opportunity to get involved in the innerworkings of that intergovernment work. But those working groups are regularly renewed and opportunity for Civil Society participation therein.
They occasionally ask for Civil Society and other stakeholders hope on the importance and they invite Civil Society on regular basis to come and participate in substantive discussions at workshops in their annual meetings. So I highly recommend, as a cochair Working Group 1, I highly recommend that you follow the Freedom Online Coalition, that you look at what they're doing. They are addressing issues of interest to us.
Clearly on some of those issues we'll have very divergent opinions, but this is an opportunistic engagement. We need to assess to what degree it's appropriate. It may not be appropriate to engage with governments on some issues, but it may be highly advantageous to engage in this kind of environment. That was a judgment call when I made when I asked to be involved in the Freedom Online Coalition. I think one needs to step outside of Civil Society occasionally. We need to work on partnerships. We really need to work on our approaches.
Thanks.
>> MODERATOR: Thanks, Matt, for this. So it's more about freedom and so on. I want to go with Susan, to talk about the trade Internet Governance and maybe TPP.
>> SUSAN CHALMERS: Thanks, Rafik. It's a pleasure to be here. As Bill mentioned earlier, Civil Society engagement and trade agreement negotiations is limited. I'd like to share my experiences as a Civil Society stakeholder during the Trans‑Pacific Partnership negotiations. As the point person for what was called the Fair Deal Coalition in New Zealand, which focused on raising awareness about copyright provisions within the TPP. First, however, I think that a point on the nature of trade agreement should be made. By nature, they are multilateral, plurilatral or bilateral exercises.
Trade agreements theoretically governments should be consulting all stakeholder groups within their country and consider this input in practice. However, private sector is mainly paid attention to most. There is a growing connection between the spheres of Internet Governance and trade. The most obvious example is the provision in the TPP that deals with country code Top Level Domain operators and dispute resolution processes. That deals with DMS policy. But Fair Deal Coalition on ISP liability and copyright for temporary copies on the Internet. So that's also discussed within the IG sphere.
Turning to the Fair Deal Coalition, I attended four negotiation rounds of the TPP on behalf of Internet New Zealand, the operator is a technical community organization, but at the same time as an open Internet advocate is a Civil Society organization.
So they had concerns about copyright provisions in the TPP text that would interfere with the open Internet. We developed the Fair Deal Coalition to be able to address these concerns with our domestic negotiators. There is something that I'd like to provide a few takeaways, as Matthew did. Some of them are quite similar, actually. But what we did in this case was we realized that the chapter ‑‑ copyright chapter was broader than just the digital provisions. So what we did is we reached out to the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind, the Creative Freedom Foundation, which represented artists, Open Source Society. We reached out to Trade Me, New Zealand's equivalent to eBay, and the librarian's association.
So we thought that by using this approach, by developing relationships with stakeholders that are not Internet focused necessarily, but have ‑‑ can provide and support your arguments and show useful illustrations, that that was really effect I again, building partnerships with other stakeholders. If the case called for it, perhaps consider building partnerships with non‑Internet focussed organizations.
Another thing that we decided to do was to take a constructive approach. So I think there's a role for protest. In the case of TPP, but we did not take that approach. What we did was we just basically presented negotiators with evidence‑based arguments and really sought to engage with them correctively. We saw that did have an effect.
Lastly, because we're running out of time, it's important when you're working towards a cause to understand the environment and all the stakeholders involved and to reach out to the other side, to listen to what they have to say and to understand their arguments. I think that it's not just if we come into a room, we have a multi‑stakeholder discussion. We can also be multi‑stakeholder outside of the meetings and really truly engage in that way.
That's all I have to say. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thanks, Susan. Okay. So let's move now to more regional and national level. Starting first with Hanane.
>> HANANE BOUJEMI: I really don't know what to say, but I think I can speak about really if Civil Society from the Middle East can influence Internet Governance. The short answer to that is no. There are will reasons why we have quite challenging in the Middle East. We have discussion from Intergovernmental organizations or international corporations and examples of ICANN and how they try to integrate Civil Society in their work, but in the case of the Middle East, there are three main challenges.
Challenge number one is the knowledge gap. It's really hard to get people to be involved in the topic, because on the one hand it's quite technical. On the other, they really didn't know how the Internet functions and how that impacts the human rights. That's the main topic in the Middle East. So we organize many, many training programs to get people to integrate this global discourse, but we get a very, very tiny selection of participants who manage to infiltrate global, like the IGF or ICANN meetings or ISOC or IGF and so on. The interest in the topic itself is very ‑‑ it's unfortunate that there isn't much interest in the topic of the Internet Governance, which makes it very challenging to select representatives of Civil Society from the region to be part of this kind of conversations. Otherwise, we claim the space on behalf of these people, and then we say oh, but we are Civil Society.
We're not Civil Society. We're not the only ones in this space. It's really, really hard also to find the slot within the space, because more than often I call this kind of environment as a clique of people and they are kind of monopolizing the whole discussion which does not represent other people. That makes it a little bit imbalanced in terms of the need, you know. And the concerns of other people who, unfortunately, can't be here because they don't know how to get here, don't know how to participate and so on. So I work specifically in that niche market for the people that can't be here.
Another challenge is the policy context. It's very, very important. I think the bottom of priorities of the people of the Middle East for reasons we all know. At the same time it's ironic, because what's going on at the security level is reinforced by the use of the Internet. That's namely the problem of ISIS and so on. It's very relevant for these people to be with us from the Middle East, but they're not. Maybe we should do a little bit more work and maybe try to simplify the issues and decode them in a way that is more relevant to these people and approachable. Because as Meryem pointed out, and even Marianne pointed that out, it's a certain level of understanding and things get complicated even for me sometimes. When I want to link human rights to the industry, you really need to do your homework to be able to connect those two fields and prove that human rights are relevant to ICANN work. I'm sure the first time that was mentioned in ICANN, at Baher said, or even Bill, oh, what's that? We really don't want to know. We just want to do business here. That's one of the other challenges.
One last one is I think it came up in your Council of Europe presentation. It's about or maybe yourself is about policy advocacy.
Now, of course in the context of the Middle East, it's really hard to reach out to the governance because of many reasons. First of all, the concept of multi‑stakeholderism does not really resonate with governments in the Middle East, for the simple reason that the overall environment is not really participatory. I don't want to have generalized examples that are quite progressive, but many of the governments do not believe in the multi‑stakeholderism and they don't think that Civil Society should be actually involved in the policymaking process.
That's even kind of bashing the dreams of normal people to be part of the process. That's really unfortunate, but it's one of the cases. Still, we have a good program of activists that would like to do work, but the trick is they still don't know how to advocate those issues of governments. That's because of the lack of policy, advocacy strategies. You have to be in a certain way, less controversial, less confrontational, more diplomatic, to make the small wins you were referring to. It's the same thing in the Middle East. I think more work should be done to engage people at the local level, but also at the microlevel. We don't want them to stay active locally or regionally. They should be able to come to the global level and also claim this space a little bit so we can have some kind of balance. We don't have only one or two organizations claiming that they represent a society, because it's just not correct. It's just a long ways. So that's what I was going to say about the three challenges. Thanks for the slot.
>> MODERATOR: Thanks. Moving to my home country; so Mongi is now working for the private sector. He used to be the former ICT minister in Indonesia, and he would give us a different standpoint here. Please.
>> MONGI MARZOUG: Thank you for the invitation and giving me the opportunity to speak about this important topic. I will speak here regarding my two years’ experience in ICT minister from the end of 2011 to the beginning of 2014. I filed two statements regarding the role of Internet in Global Policy Governance and the role of Internet in Indonesia, and it is for access of information and also an efficient tool for wide public consultation. The traditional way of developing solution to public policy problems is changing. It's clear also that an open government approach makes government more open, accountable, and responsible for citizens. However, it's clear that this kind of policymaking process require time and commitment. The government if it is possible and comfortable for the decision is aware that the significant contribution of stakeholders leads to better decision. Civil Society and academics benefits as they have less business interests than business sector and private sector. So they are playing an important role in opinions.
As you know, or you may know, in January 2011, Internet and social networks have played a pivotal role in revolution and after. It's clear this tool is playing a central role in the information exchange between all the parts, in general, without a clear process or a well-defined organization. In the following, I will mention shortly some examples during my tenure as in Tunisia, and the first is IGT on the government Internet issues between all stakeholders and Tunisia makes clear social and political role of Internet and the need of dialogue between all stakeholders to handle those issues.
Second is in fact the multi‑stakeholder approach of Tunisia digital strategy for five years. First three days’ workshop took place at Bakar June 2013 with more than 80 attendees, global strategy and development access was done and first draft and project also was done.
Second three days’ workshop was organized in 2014 with more than 100 attendees, and more participation of Civil Society E.
My two have those workshops in this process; the process was the second workshop in 2014. The third example is the preparation and rollout of Tunisia 2013 and in 2013 and its members, public and private.
Pressure from Civil Society and by the end of the current ICT ‑‑ the current ICT ministry agreed to include a minister from Civil Society in this concept. And I think this representative would be appointed in this council.
There are other examples, but in order to of time, like the contribution of Civil Society preparation in Tunisia, the policy mainly for Voice‑over‑IP and discussion with the Civil Society in 2014, and other organizations, I remember that Tunisia in 2013 organized the Freedom Online Coalition in Tunisia.
Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thanks. So we move with the last speaker. Juuso, you have the last word and take a few minutes.
>> JUUSO MOISANDER: Thanks for handing the final word over to the governments. So I'm Juuso Moisander. I'm the desk officer for WSIS follow‑up at the minister foreign affairs of Finland. I'm involved in the discussion of dialogues in pretty much all the organizations that have been mentioned here so far. But I will just briefly focus on our national WSIS coordination, national IGF process, and talk a little bit also about the CSTD and WSIS + 10 and what we've been dealing nationally with it. First of all, we believe that multi‑stakeholderism begins at home. We value that very much. Since preparing for the Tunis phase, more than ten years ago we have a national WSIS coordination group, which is open for all multi‑stakeholder. It has about 50 more or less active members. The group decided to go after the WSIS process as a follow‑up group which eventually led to us organizing our first national IGN in 2010. We see this as a process. We don't do events. We feel more it's a multi‑stakeholder process. We facilitated it and open for all equal footing. It's the way to bring the Civil Society voices to international arenas, as many here mentioned there are challenges and participation, resources and representation and so on.
So through this group, what we've achieved and what we've done is not only six national IGFs, but also some statements last year one on multi‑stakeholderism paper. We contributed to the ten‑year review process at the CSTD through a multi‑stakeholder paper. So my government did not submit a paper of their own, but we are in the category of others as the Finnish stakeholders, which is community. For preparing for the WSIS + 10, when the first zero draft was released, we had a reading of the paper a few days later, all the stakeholders and then we developed the Finnish reaction and forwarded it on. We see a lot of value in Civil Society participation at the CSTD in the working groups on IGF improvements, especially on the one on in‑house cooperation. And we see that the more we do nationally, there's also a way kind of to bring our model to the global level and then we hope that this spreads to many other nations as an encouraging example and a good practice. Also, naturally, I'm hoping we have a principle of openness in the government that even in other organizations and on the trade side, the Civil Society would understand that we're trying to have their voices also in our positions. Therefore, whenever they speak on in the international arenas, there is a little bit of Civil Society involved as well.
Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Juuso. I guess I cannot keep people from lunch more than that. So I want to thank our speakers for ‑‑ I want to thank our speakers. Sorry that we didn't have time for interaction. As software engineer, I'm really bad in time estimation, I guess. So I'm really sorry for that. But if people ‑‑ okay. Yes? There is a question. Yeah, why not?
>> AUDIENCE: Good morning, everyone. My name is ‑‑ I'm from the state university and also a participant from the youth IGF program, being part also of the conservatory, could we really call this session a workshop. As previously scheduled, we had 35 minutes for the discussions and 35 minutes for the questions and answers. So how can we effectively discuss the ways that the Civil Society can impact the Internet Governance if we don't have the necessary voice so we can share our experiences and our thoughts on that matter. So I just want to leave you guys with in questions of ours and I thank everybody for the attention. Thank you.
(Applause)
>> MODERATOR: I guess I can get all the blame for that.
>> Why don't we take a few questions?
>> MODERATOR: What I said is I don't want to keep people from lunch, but if they want to stay, they are welcome. If they want to ask question, yeah, sure.
>> MARIANNE FRANKLIN: We always have these issues about time constraints. The point is well taken. I'm happy to stay.
>> MODERATOR: Please go ahead.
>> AUDIENCE: First, I will speak in Portuguese so I can be clear, so I ask to put your phones for the translation.
My name is Andrea, and I'm part of the youth in IGF program. And as of today, we're going to launch the youth observatory for the Internet, which is an agency which tries to place the youth in the debate of Internet Governance. And I would also like to combine that with other comments made before. Where is the Civil Society in this debate? Especially in this debate, because I thought the Civil Society was going to have to play a major role in this workshop? This did not feel like a workshop. So I'd like to ask you where is the voice of the youth? Because if I were to answer the question that the workshop proposes, I would say that, no, the Civil Society cannot do anything against Internet Governance. This was my question. In addition to what he asked, where are the youth in this debate? Then I'd like to propose a question which is for our youth observatory. I'd like to propose we all discuss this with the audience and the table so we can contribute with solutions.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
>> My response is carry on. Point taken, tell us more. Point taken, at least from where I'm sitting.
>> Are there any questions about what was said during the session from the audience?
>> MERYEM MARZOUKI: Can I speak English? It's not my native language. Thank you for telling us we are elder among the elders. You started to say, of course, I mean, youth should be represented, too, but it's not a necessity. And the fact that youth is not represented here, because it's also a question of experience, doesn't mean that Civil Society is not represented. You said ‑‑ you asked where is the Civil Society in this workshop? And I agree and Rafik recognized that it was too ambitious to have too many speakers. We have heard about different experiences and all of them are from Civil Society. I am myself from Civil Society. And I have been active in ‑‑ for more than ten years. So we are Civil Society together, even if we have some more years than you do. And I cannot be sorry about that.
(Applause)
>> MARIANNE FRANKLIN: I also identify with Civil Society. There was a huge delegation of high school pupils and we have not seen that in the last few years. It would be good to see that enabled. It costs time and money. I believe youth have a voice. The only question is if you are setting up a youth observatory, how you envisage your participation. If you want to put speakers forward, that would be welcomed. I think this is just an issue of organization. But I'd like to see more efforts and resources deployed to bring high school pupils and university students under 25. We had this experience with Syracuse college students in workshop 31. They have been very active from their home base in New York. They're all undergrad students. There are ways to incorporate the youth. We are all Civil Society here. There is a difference. Some of us are just younger than others.
>> I have a very practical question. I'm not Civil Society, although I'm sympathetic to Civil Society. We at the OECD are organizing a big ministerial event which will take place in Cancun in June 21 and 23 of June. We have been discussing how to bring the young people, or I would say the primary users, and the future, in fact. I have kids, grownups. And it was not obvious who to ask to come to represent, to give the voice to the youth. And we could do that throughout the sessions by having young people taking the floor asking questions, challenging the policymakers, the ministers, and the other stakeholders that will be here. I'm very much in favor of that.
The only thing for the moment that we have done is thanks to the support of the Mexicans and the business community, is organize what they call a hack‑a‑thon where we will bring in ‑‑ because then we need to pay for these young people to come to the ministerial. They will come and they will develop an app and there will be a prize. But I believe that in addition to the hack‑a‑thon, we could very well have young people in the room, but you need to tell us who do I send an e‑mail to begin organizing this? Resources are limited. We already support Civil Society coming to the meeting. We could probably find a little bit of funding to have some young people, but please give me a name, send me an e‑mail. I'm giving you my business card after that. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: I want to respond. I'm not taking it personally, but since I joined myself, got involved in IGF, I was one of the founder on youth coalition of Internet Governance. I left that a few years ago, because even if I am in the 30s, I don't feel that I can represent or talk on behalf of the youth. So we work on that and we have a lot of discussion, how do we get involved. Yes, maybe we need to have some young people in the panel, and we could get this kind of requirement. But the important thing is not to create a separate stakeholder of youth. No, it's to have young people in the different stakeholder. It can be challenging for some of them, like the government of the private sector. So we have the setting like coalition that needs to be rejuvenated. I work on this topic and myself, I think I am still young. Okay, I cannot represent you guys, but always about representation problems. We try to have this to really get experience. It's not about age, really about experience. Not everyone is aware about what the OECD is doing or the Council of Europe. To hear from that, and we want to keep the discussion going. It's not just ‑‑ it's not workshop, it's roundtable. This was challenging sitting here how you can speak. There was maybe not enough ‑‑ I can take that, not enough moderation that we keep brief so we can listen to everyone and to have room for discussion. But point taken. Yes, Hanene?
>> HANENE BOUJEMI: I moderated this group by mistake. I'm not sure the Youth Coalition on Internet Governance ‑‑ they're quite active on Facebook if you want to join them. You have to join Facebook in case you're not there already. They're doing really good work because they have been active in different workshops here. I'm not sure why we are not involved or you're not involved. But try to tag along. They have quite active people doing a lot of work in different organizations. So it would be really, really good if you could tag along. This field is quite challenging for a lot of people, especially non‑English speaking members or if you don't come from I call them privileged country, like the U.S. or Europe.
So we need more representation from other regions. I was speaking previously about the experience of the Middle East and how it's challenging to bring people from that region to be part of this. So maybe we've been working in this for a long, long time. It's more than ten years. It's not easy. You will see for yourself, if you are interested, you will definitely bump into a few challenges here and there.
>> I'm sorry that I have to leave. My name is Susan Chalmers and I'm a member of the multi‑stakeholder advisor group. I will be sure ‑‑ we'll have probably have a meeting before the end of the week. I'll be sure to tell them of your concerns regarding youth participation.
>> I have a remote participant comment from Fernando Marquez. His question is, "So can Civil Society impact global Internet Governance? What is your take away from this workshop?" He actually indicates that no more than 140 characters with spaces.
>> MARIANNE FRANKLIN: Civil Society groups and networks have already influenced Global Internet Governance.
>> Just a clarification, to make sure there are no misunderstandings from our part. We're not proposing no separation for multi‑stakeholder or empowering the youth so they can take over the work or stuff like that. In the first way, trying to be heard, it's actually my first participation here at IGF and these initiative from the CGI.br and the Internet Society was like they were opening the word on Internet Governance for us. So we have a lot of energy. We have a lot of interests. We have a lot of backgrounds, different backgrounds. And we just want to add them to the actual discussions that are already being made. Opportunities like this are so important, so interesting to participate, and we were here with expectation to participate, to give just a little of contribution and tell we're here. We're here to help. We're trying to help. We're trying to give our vision of this matter of these subjects.
So it's not an aggressive posture, but just a request of a little bit of ‑‑ I thank you guys for being discussion here for us. Our objective here is done. It's done. Thank you very much.
>> Thanks to raising those important points and to come here and contribute to the conversation. I think in a really meaningful way. I'm very excited to not be a youth anymore. I feel very old today. But I just wanted to add that in addition to this in person meeting, there are intersessional ways to get involved between IGF, online meetings, you can contribute to documents. I know it's not as exciting as being here with all these people who have traveled to be at the IGF. There is also national IGFs. Something ‑‑ I know you're not asking for youth to be a different take holder group, but it seems other stakeholders groups will get from the private sector funding or it will community. ABC does run some capacity‑building programs. They're not nearly as large, but we have the African school on Internet Governance. We run on three different regions, the Internet Governance exchange. There are some problems Annette is running in the region. I think youth is under‑represented. I think youth in Civil Society are even more underrepresented, but there are opportunities, smaller ones and also opportunities to engage in between meetings and to stand and do social media as well. So I think we really look forward to more engagement from youth.
>> MARIANNE FRANKLIN: There is something called Dynamic Coalitions. To be dynamic, you need to have a lot of emergency. We welcome your energy. If you target all the Dynamic Coalition meetings and come to them and join, you have helped us enormously. And that's one easy space to enter. What you do with it after you enter is really go for it.
>> Fernando Marquez is again posing his question. He would like a couple of answers, actually more attention. If you can respond to his question about whether Civil Society can impact Global Internet Governance. I think Marianne briefly responded, but if we could get a couple of other responses, that would be great.
>> ANNE CARBLANC: The response is yes, Civil Society influences the work influences the work of the organization.
>> DEBORAH BROWN: I believe the answer is yes, they can or yes, we can, but it's not very easy and it takes a lot of effort and sustained effort. We've gotten texts in resolutions. To give an example, Civil Society was pushing new special rapporteur in privacy, we were really pushing hard and it was accepted in the end. There was examples at UNESCO we added language on an a him at this and encryption that got in the outcome document. So there's huge challenges and I think we have to have really specific goals. We probably aren't as influential as some other stakeholder groups. There are some examples some small gains we can share.
>> MODERATOR: We still have someone.
>> Thank you, and I wanted to respond to the response and ask if there was any way all the Civil Society organizations might just start a document that says impacts and by year. And I think that might be really helpful in answer the question.
>> MODERATOR: Yes. Thanks. I think this we do a lot of work, but I think we don't document enough. We are not enough visible, because, for example, for me, involved in ICANN, I think we have an influence there because how the process works. We can have impact. So in this roundtable we try to get and emphasize some practical example to see how ‑‑ those I think Matt made good points about what was needed. It's the requirements, what's needed to be ‑‑ to maybe Civil Society improve the way and how to do things. Meryem?
>> MERYEM MARZOUKI: On this documentation it's very important. But I think we need to have also some outside documentation and maybe assessment, because it would easily turn into a PR exercise. And I would say that for some years now, there is a good amount of academic research, academic literature on this issue, the participation of Civil Society. The outcome of this participation, and to answer the question of the insisting person that did the remote participation, I would say what is most important is there are different ways of participating, and there is different ways of impacting. You may not have a direct and immediate impact, but you have a serious ‑‑ you can have serious impact on the long run. And it could be also indirect, for instance, through international law organization as I mentioned at the beginning.
>> I would like to invite you all tomorrow on the Youth Coalition of the Internet Governance; we have the initial run of the observatory of the youth. So you can go and discuss with us the issues that we're talking here briefly. We can talk about the ideas we are thinking about the participation of youth in the Internet Governance. 2:00 p.m. Room 5 A.
>> What time?
>> Tomorrow, 2:00 p.m., Room 5.
>> MODERATOR: I'm happy to see the work you're doing is evolving. This is important. We find the one issue about the youth coalition is the turnover, because people get old. So you need always to get new leadership.
We all started younger. Okay. I think it's time to wrap up. And I want to thank everyone who stayed the extra 30 minutes. That was really, I think, good for us to have some interaction. Thanks again. Thank you.
(Applause)
(Adjourned)